Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to the treatment of patients with lung diseases and, more particularly, to devices, systems, and methods for marking the trachea in a three-dimensional (3D) model generated based on CT scan image data of a patient's lungs.
Discussion of Related Art
Visualization techniques related to visualizing a patient's lungs have been developed so as to help clinicians perform diagnoses and/or surgeries on the patient's lungs. Visualization is especially important for identifying a location of a diseased region. Further, when treating the diseased region, additional emphasis is given to identification of the particular location of the diseased region so that a surgical operation is performed at the correct location.
In the past, scanned two-dimensional images of the lungs have been used to aid in visualization. In order to visualize a lung from scanned two-dimensional images, it is important to determine whether or not an area of the two-dimensional images is a part of the lung. Thus, detecting a starting location where a navigation procedure will begin, for example, a location of an organ or other part that is connected to or is a part of the lung, is also important for identifying the lung. In one example, the trachea can be used as the starting location because the trachea has a substantially constant diameter along its length and is known to be connected to the lung.